Sadness

When I'm feeling really stuck in life. When I'm having a bad day for whatever reason. When I feel
"off."

I've come to realize its mostly because I'm sad. Funny, how even saying something so simple, "I'm sad sometimes," feels so incredibly vulnerable.

It's funny, because being sad is a basic human emotion. It's something that is as natural and as normal as breathing.

So what's the big deal and how does it relate to kids growing up with absent fathers?

When I think about the idea of an adorable little human being not having one or both parents, there is nothing more sad to me.  That anguish of being 2 or 3 years old and instinctively knowing that there is a huge hole in the very foundation of who you are. That little boy, not knowing or understanding why, just alone, with no words or arts to express their feelings. Helpless, hopeless and at the effect of a scary world without the masculine presence of their father.


I think those kids become incredibly resilient to sadness. Carrying that level of sadness could destroy someone, or so it seems to a child. Doing the best that little child of infinite wisdom can, they put the sadness away, far-far away. He compartmentalizes the sadness and rationalizes it away as it arises. They put it away until they can figure out how to deal with it and once there very survival is not in danger.

That kid grows up into an adult. An adult who is so accustomed to burying sadness and hiding it away, that they don't even know sadness when it stares them right in the face.  At which point they push it away, far-far away. He compartmentalizes and rationalizes the feelings away.

For some of you, you might be thinking... So... What's the big deal. Sadness is no fun and it should be kept at bay.

Well, keeping any emotion at bay, shaves off part of who we are. When you put a wall on your sadness, you put a wall between you and those you love, you put a wall between you and spirit.

The catch 22 is that by putting away your sadness, you isolate yourself from others, you starve yourself of connection and relationship, there by recreating the abandonment over and over and over.

The good news is that if you are reading this, you've already begun the healing process. You've already begun to take those walls down inside of yourself.

The bad news is that you will have to lean into your sadness over and over, express, be with it, share it and acknowledge it.

The really good news is that each tiny step you take into your sadness, you will experience and equal step into freedom, aliveness and connection in a way you have not experienced before.

Cheers to your journey and mine.